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Embedded Software Engineering Interview Course

Nail the Embedded Software Engineering Interview

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Designed and taught by FAANG+ experts to help you ace the toughest Embedded Software Engineering Interviews at FAANG and Tier-1 tech companies.

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Get all the information about the course and pricing in our live webinar with Q&A
Best suited for
  • Embedded Software Engineers working for systems companies
  • Software Engineers working for semiconductor companies
  • System Software Engineers who want to become Embedded Software Engineers

Why choose this course?

Program designed by FAANG+ leads

Covering data structures, algorithms, interview-relevant topics, and career coaching

Individualized teaching and 1:1 help

Technical coaching, homework assistance, solutions discussion, and individual session

Mock interviews with Silicon Valley engineers

Live interview practice in real-life simulated environments with FAANG and top-tier interviewers

Personalized feedback

Constructive, structured, and actionable insights for improved interview performance

Career skills development

Resume building, LinkedIn profile optimization, personal branding, and live behavioral workshops

50% Money-Back Guarantee*

If you do well in our course but still don't land a domain-relevant job within the post-program support period, we'll refund 50% of the tuition you paid for the course.*

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Meet your instructors

Our highly experienced instructors are active hiring managers and employees at FAANG+ companies and know exactly what it takes to ace tech and managerial interviews.
instructor

Rushd Ilyas

Staff Firmware Engineer
10+ years experience
Tesla brand logo

A typical week at Interview Kickstart

This is how we structure and organize your interview prep with our high-quality, content-rich course. Our learners devote 10 to 12 hours per week to this course.

Thu

Foundation content
Get high-quality videos and course material for next week’s topic
Consists of introduction to fundamentals, interview-relevant topics and case studies
Assignment review session
Focused group discussions involving learners and the instructor on the assignment's solution
Interview-like drill down into key techniques and design choices

Sun

Online live sessions
Attend 4-hour sessions covering interview-relevant Embedded Software Engineering concepts
Each class covers a wide variety of interview problems, including open-ended questions and how to approach these questions
Live feedback from a tier-1 tech instructor

Mon-Wed

Practice problems & assignments
Practice the concepts taught in live sessions to solve assignment questions
Work on interview-oriented assignment problems and discuss the solutions
Live doubt-solving with FAANG+ Embedded Software instructors

Every day

1:1 access to instructors
Personalized coaching from FAANG+ Embedded Software instructors
Individualized and detailed attention to your questions
Solution walkthroughs

Embedded Software Course details and curriculum

Data structures and Algorithms
  • 5 weeks
  • 5 live classes

1

Sorting

  • Introduction to Sorting
  • Basics of Asymptotic Analysis and Worst Case & Average Case Analysis
  • Different Sorting Algorithms and their comparison
  • Algorithm paradigms like Divide & Conquer, Decrease & Conquer, Transform & Conquer
  • Presorting
  • Extensions of Merge Sort, Quick Sort, Heap Sort
  • Common sorting-related coding interview problems

2

Recursion

  • Recursion as a Lazy Manager’s Strategy
  • Recursive Mathematical Functions
  • Combinatorial Enumeration
  • Backtracking
  • Exhaustive Enumeration & General Template
  • Common recursion- and backtracking-related coding interview problems

3

Trees

  • Dictionaries & Sets, Hash Tables 
  • Modeling data as Binary Trees and Binary Search Tree and performing different operations over them
  • Tree Traversals and Constructions 
  • BFS Coding Patterns
  • DFS Coding Patterns
  • Tree Construction from its traversals 
  • Common trees-related coding interview problems

4

Graphs

  • Overview of Graphs
  • Problem definition of the 7 Bridges of Konigsberg and its connection with Graph theory
  • What is a graph, and when do you model a problem as a Graph?
  • How to store a Graph in memory (Adjacency Lists, Adjacency Matrices, Adjacency Maps)
  • Graphs traversal: BFS and DFS, BFS Tree, DFS stack-based implementation
  • A general template to solve any problems modeled as Graphs
  • Graphs in Interviews
  • Common graphs-related coding interview problems

5

Dynamic Programming

  • Dynamic Programming Introduction
  • Modeling problems as recursive mathematical functions
  • Detecting overlapping subproblems
  • Top-down Memorization
  • Bottom-up Tabulation
  • Optimizing Bottom-up Tabulation
  • Common DP-related coding interview problems
Embedded Software Engineering
  • 6 weeks
  • 6 live classes

1

Designing and Developing Embedded Systems

  • Structured design of finite state machines for real-life embedded systems
  • Design a smart garden watering system with multiple zones. Optimize for performance and cost 
  • Design a traffic light controller, and many more
  • Deep dive into the intricacies of embedded systems design under multiple resource constraints — Size, Storage, Performance, Operating Conditions
  • How to detect and handle external and internal faults and recover/tolerate methods
  • Common interview questions on debugging embedded devices. Implementing loggers
  • How to ensure fault-resilience in embedded software?
  • How to design for performance, logging, and testability?
  • Templates to answer open-ended system design interview questions

2

Programming for Embedded Devices

  • Deep dive into the interview-relevant concepts of Embedded C, including optimized coding
  • Interesting embedded specific use cases of Bit Manipulation
  • Detailed discussion of concepts such as Pointers, number representation and data types, and advanced use of volatile and const qualifiers in Embedded C 
  • Comprehensive coverage of efficient coding techniques
  • Deep understanding of various compiler optimizations using generated assembly code
  • FAANG+ level interview questions involving Byte Ordering, Pointers, Number Representation, and Data Alignment and Packing in Aggregate Data Types. 
  • Problems like finding the number of set bits in a given number
  • Exhaustive coverage of different solutions along with pros and cons

3

Microcontroller Units

  • Systematic coverage of computer organization and architecture using ARM CORTEX
  • CPU, Memory and Peripheral Bus, Instruction Pipeline and Cache 
  • Deep dive into the programmer’s model of the ARM CORTEX M
  • Registers and modes
  • Interesting Assembly instructions for efficient coding
  • Stack memory and its usage in C and Assembly procedure calls
  • ARM Procedure Calling Standard (AAPCS) for binary compatibility
  • CORTEX M exception handling and interrupts 
  • Low-power features and deep sleep states
  • Reset handling sequence, usage of different stacks and switching processor modes
  • Interview questions related to Interrupts, such as Interrupt Vectoring, Interrupt Latency, and Latency Reduction features (register stacking, tail chaining, late arrival)
  • Popular FAANG+ Interview questions on designing low-level spinlocks, efficient usage of atomic operations 
  • Design an SW Timer library using a 16-bit timer on the MCU chip

4

Embedded OS

  • Deep dive into the interview relevant concepts of HW Initialization and Board Bring-up
  • Types of boot loaders
  • Security issues in boot loaders
  • U-Boot
  • Simulated interview questions: Design device drivers in a bare-metal environment
  • Questions related to the linker, boot flow, and boot loaders 
  • What are some things that typically go wrong in a boot flow? 
  • Concurrency issues in Embedded Systems and concurrency control mechanisms such as Spinlocks, Mutexes, and Semaphores using P-threads
  • Interview questions on correct and inappropriate usage of concurrency control mechanisms
  • Discussion around Critical Section, Shared Resources, InterProcess Synchronization, Communication, and Reentrancy
  • Popular FAANG+ Interview questions around deadlock, livelock, Spinlock, Semaphore, and Mutex
  • List down some scenarios where you would use a spin lock instead of a mutex? 
  • Designing high-performance NW appliances
Career Coaching
  • 3 weeks
  • 3 live classes

1

Interview Strategy and Success

2

Behavioral Interview Prep

3

Offers and Negotiation

Support Period
  • 6 months

1

15 mock interviews

2

Take classes you missed/retake classes/tests

3

1:1 technical/career coaching

4

Interview strategy and salary negotiation support

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Practice and track progress on UpLevel

UpLevel will be your all-in-one learning platform to get you FAANG-ready, with 10,000+ interview questions, timed tests, videos, mock interviews suite, and more.
Mock interviews suite
On-demand timed tests
In-browser online judge
10,000 interview questions
100,000 hours of video explanations
Class schedules & activity alerts
Real-time progress update
11 programming languages

Get upto 15 mock interviews with Logo hiring managers

What makes our mock Interviews the best:

Hiring managers from Tier-1 companies like Amazon & Apple

Interview with the best. No one will prepare you better!

Domain-specific Interviews

Practice for your target domain - Embedded Software Engineering

Detailed personalized feedback

Identify and work on your improvement areas

Transparent, non-anonymous interviews

Get the most realistic experience possible

1. Flexible schedule

Pick timings convenient to you

4. Technical and behavioral interviews

Uplevel your technical and behavioral interview skills

2. Remote interview experience

Mirrors the current format of remote interviews

5. Level-specific interviews

Because an L4 at Google can be quite different from an E7 at Meta

3. Feedback documentation

All the feedback you’ve ever wanted, recorded and documented

6. Interviewer of your choice

Choose based on company and/or domain

Career impact

Our engineers land high-paying and rewarding offers from the biggest tech companies, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Tesla, and Netflix.

Shyam Bhavsar

Placed at:

As an experienced Hardware/Software developer in Networking industry, studying with IK has been a rewarding learning experience. There is clarity and simplicity in their lucid and in-depth course content and delivery is superb with some of the finest, brilliant coaches. Practice sessions are thorough and impart an insightful understanding of problem-solving processes. IK operations support people listen with empathy and follow through diligently driving satisfactory closure to every reasonable request for help.

Tushar Patil

Course Content is very good. It was beyond pattern matching approach most of people do by doing practice on lot of questions, There are good mentors to teach important topics, also mock Interview count is sufficient to get feel of it, system design content is also very good.

RBK

Interview Kickstart helped me land a better job and become a better engineer. After years of stagnation, I was able to refresh my skills in data structures and algorithms. The course's comprehensive curriculum, expert instructors, and mock interviews prepared me for top-tier tech interviews. I am now confident in my abilities and have secured a significantly higher-paying position.

How to enroll for the Embedded Software Engineer Interview Course?

Learn more about Interview Kickstart and the Embedded Software Engineering Interview Course by joining the free webinar hosted by Ryan Valles, co-founder of Interview Kickstart.
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enroll course

A Free Guide to Kickstart Your Embedded Software Career at FAANG+

From the interview process and career path to interview questions and salary details — learn everything you need to know about Embedded Software careers at top tech companies.
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Interview Strategy and Success

Interview Questions

Career Path

Salary and Levels at FAANG

Frequently Asked Questions

Embedded Software Engineering Interview Process Outline

The Embedded Systems interview process at FAANG+ and other Tier-1 companies vary a bit for each company. Let’s look at the interview process at some of the top tech companies:
  • Amazon: 4 to 5 rounds after an optional online assessment.
  • Apple: 5 to 8 rounds with all interviews being technical except one round with the VP or director on cultural fit.
  • Microsoft: One phone screen followed by 5 on-site interviews on the same day.
  • Google: Phone screen, technical telephonic round, and then 4-5 rounds of on-site, including technical and behavioral rounds.
Our Embedded Software Engineering course will cover all you need to know to nail these rounds.

What to Expect at Embedded Software Engineering Interviews?

Each company’s interview process for Embedded Software Engineers is unique. To ace the interview and prepare better, you should be familiar with the interview rounds you will face.
Let’s take a look at the Embedded Systems interview process at FAANG+ companies.
That said, the Technical Program Manager interview process generally has 3-5 rounds.

1

Embedded Systems Interview Process at Amazon
Amazon conducts 4 to 5 rounds after an optional online assessment: Each round is independent. You can expect questions from the following topics:
  • Problem Solving
  • Algorithms
  • Common Data Structures for Embedded Systems
  • Writing Structured code
  • Designing an Embedded System keeping the following in mind;
    • Keeping h/w, application s/w, and customers in mind
    • Modularity and clear interfaces
    • Speed
    • Concurrency
    • Reducing Memory
    • Handling Endianness
    • Managing Memory constraints
    • Queuing requests
    • Tradeoffs for RPC/IPC calls

2

Embedded Systems Interview Process at Apple
The Embedded Systems interview process at Apple has at least 5 to 6 rounds and may extend to 7 to 8 rounds. All interviews are technical except for one round with the VP or director, which is about cultural fitment. Each technical round is independent and covers the following:
  • A part of the experience shown in the resume
  • A part specific to the role at Apple
  • Embedded Systems questions
    • Design and architecture considerations
    • Embedded OS features
    • Optimized C and assembly language code
    • Debugging a code snippet

3

Embedded Systems Interview Process at Microsoft
At Microsoft, the Embedded Systems interview process includes one telephonic round followed by 5 on-site interviews on the same day. The 5 on-site rounds are focused on:
  • Problem Solving
  • Computer Science topics
  • Embedded Systems
  • C/C++
  • Team Work

4

Embedded Systems Interview Process at Google
The Embedded Systems interview process at Google mainly involves 3 rounds of interview:
  • Phone screen: This interview tests your communication skills and professionalism.
  • Technical telephonic round: Questions related to your technical background and role-relevant skills are asked. It may also include an online assessment.
  • On-site round: This interview includes 4-5 rounds on areas such as:
    • Embedded programming concepts
    • Computer architecture, memory hierarchy, and assembly language programming for CPU architectures 
    • Embedded system design
    • Behavioral round
Check out our article on the Google Embedded Systems interview process for more information.
 

Embedded Software Engineer Interview Questions

Want to build a career in Embedded Software Engineering? Take a jab at these Embedded systems interview questions and see if you can solve them:
 

1

Embedded Systems Interview Questions on Embedded C Programming
Add two integers using & and ^.
Reverse bits of a given 32-bit unsigned integer.
Find the single element that does not appear thrice in a given array of integers.
For a given number, find the number of ones in its binary representation. Given nums=[0, 1, 3] return 2.
How would you test for a loop in a linked list?
How would you use a binary search algorithm without recursion?
Write code to perform a level order search in a binary tree.
Can you use Union in Structure?
Differentiate between Structure and Union.
Differentiate between bubble sort and quicksort.

2

Domain-specific Embedded Systems Interview Questions
Explain the use of ‘Volatile’ in Embedded C
How do you implement your own software spinlock?
Differentiate between mutexes and semaphores.
How do you implement your own malloc?
How would you reduce interrupt latency?
Would you debug ISR using breakpoints?
How do you debug a deadlock?
Write a program using the power-save super loop.
Design a finite state machine for a Traffic Light Controller.
For more questions, read Top Questions for Embedded Software Engineering Interview.
 

3

Embedded Software Engineer Interview Questions on Behavioral Skills
Describe an Embedded Software project you are proud of.
How do you stay abreast of the latest Embedded Software Engineering technologies and trends?
Why did you choose to become an Embedded Software Engineer?
What are your views on the company’s future and the Embedded Software market?
Tell me about a time your colleagues disagreed with your solution to a problem. How did you resolve it?
Describe when you used a creative, innovative approach to devise a solution.
Want to know how to prepare for your Embedded systems interview? Take a look at our article on Google Embedded Systems Engineer interview preparation.
 

Embedded Software Engineering Career

Before you plan your interview preparation, it’s important to know exactly what skills Embedded Systems Engineer jobs require and what your responsibilities and compensation will likely be. All that information will help you strategize how to prepare for an Embedded Systems Engineer job interview.
Still, there’s a common theme of expectations from a Technical Program Manager.

1

Embedded Software Engineering Job Roles and Responsibilities
An Embedded Systems or Software Engineer helps design, develop, and maintain Embedded systems in products. The role often includes software development and also requires knowledge of entire Embedded systems.
An Embedded Software Engineer works very close to the hardware, developing small footprint devices like wrist watches, Engine Control Units of automobiles, mobile phones, networking equipment, and digital home assistants. Even though the specific responsibilities of Embedded Software Engineers may vary for each company, their key day-to-day jobs include:
 
Reading data sheets of different hardware components
Designing and developing code that should be frugal in its resource requirements, such as memory and execution time
Designing and developing software that can withstand hardware failures
Writing code in C/C++/assembly language
Use external systems for debugging and analyzing Embedded systems
Optimizing code
Develop device drivers and other kernel modules
Analyzing and enhancing efficiency, stability, and scalability of system resources
Knowledge of MCUs and other hardware components
Familiarity with the CPU instruction set
Low-level programming to develop device drivers and other kernel modules

2

Embedded Systems Engineer Job Roles:
Some organizations use the title “Embedded Systems Engineer” or “Embedded Software Engineer” for most of their engineers. Let’s look at the different job roles and their responsibilities:
Embedded Systems Engineer: The engineer will do more basic software development tasks, often with supervision, and focus on developing skills.
Senior Embedded Systems Engineer: These developers have more autonomy to build and improve software and systems. They can analyze complex technical problems, diagnose their root cause, and find solutions. They may also mentor more junior engineers.
Principal Embedded Systems Engineer: These engineers focus on developing the firmware. They tend to have extreme autonomy and will often be involved in designing Embedded systems and Embedded software. These engineers usually work and communicate with top leadership.
Embedded Architect: An architect often makes vital decisions about the structure of an entire system and oversees its development. An Embedded Architect makes high-level design decisions and coordinates technical requirements for the entire project team. This includes selecting programming languages and vendor tools and deciding how the components of the system will interact.
Read more about Skills Required to Become an Embedded Systems Engineer.
 

3

Career Roadmap for an Embedded Software Engineer
In a Tier-1 company, the career progression for the Embedded Systems role generally looks like this:
  • Embedded Systems or Software Engineer
  • Senior Embedded Systems or Software Engineer
  • Principal Embedded Systems or Software Engineer
  • Chief Embedded Software Engineer
  • Chief Technology Officer
Amazon Embedded Software Engineer career path
L4 – SDE1 → L5 – SDE2 → L6 – SDE3 → L7 – Principal Engineer → L8 – Sr. Principal Engineer → L9 – Scientist
 
Apple Embedded Software Engineer career path
L2 → L3 → L4 → L5 (at this level, the people are generally known in the industry)  → L6
Despite the levels, the career path is quite fluid. The transition is from writing code to designing architecture/framework and then to cross-team collaboration and designing a complete system or platform architecture.
 
Microsoft Embedded Software Engineer career path
61 – Entry Level → 62 → 63 → 64 → 65 – Principal Engineer
 
Facebook Embedded Software Engineer career path
E3 → E4 → E5 → E6 → E7 → E8
 
Google Embedded Software Engineer career path
Software Engineer II (L3) → Software Engineer III (L4) → Senior Software Engineer (L5) → Staff Software Engineer (L6) → Senior Staff Software Engineer (L7) → Principal Engineer (L8) → Distinguished Engineer (L9) → Google Fellow (L10) → Senior Google Fellow (L11)
 

Embedded Software Engineer Salary and Levels at FAANG

A Embedded Software Engineer can exist at different levels in a company. For this reason, the Embedded Software Engineer salary varies significantly on that basis. We’ve curated FAANG Technical Program Manager salary data by level for your convenience:
 
Facebook Embedded Software Engineer Salary
The typical Meta Embedded Software Engineer salary is $153,351 per year, with $25,000 as the average additional pay. Embedded Software Engineer salaries at Meta can range from $139,977 to $212,171 per year.
Amazon Embedded Software Engineer Salary
The average Amazon Embedded Software Engineer earns $147,824 annually, which includes a base salary of $138,824 with a $19,435 bonus. 
Apple Embedded Software Engineer Salary
The typical Apple Embedded Software Engineer salary is $1,43,885 per year with $141,898 base pay. Embedded Software Engineer salaries at Apple can range from $1,27,060 to $2,18,115 per year.
Microsoft Embedded Software Engineer Salary
The median package for a senior software engineer is $305k, where $275k is the base salary, $14k is in stocks, The average salary for Embedded Software Engineer I at Microsoft in the US is $127,341, with an average base pay of $127,335 and $2,506 additional pay.and $16k is in bonuses.
Google Embedded Software Engineer Salary
The average annual Google Embedded Systems programmer salary is $192,779 in the US, with $191,294 being the average base pay and $2,970 as the average additional pay.
Salary and Levels at Some Top Tier-1 Companies for Embedded Software Engineers
The estimated Embedded Systems Programmer salary is $1,00,906 per year in the US, with an average salary of $94,138 per year. (Source: glassdoor.com)
The average Embedded Systems Software Engineer Salary in the US is $112,479 per year or $57.68 per hour. Entry-level positions start at $97,500 per year, while most experienced workers make up to $142,517 per year.
Salary ranges can vary widely depending on many important factors, including education, certifications, additional skills, and the number of years you have spent in your profession.
Knowing the Embedded System/Software Engineer’s salary details for Tier-1 companies can help you evaluate your options better. We’ve curated the salaries associated with some of the top companies at different levels:
 

Embedded Software Engineers at Tier-1 Companies

Average compensation by level
L3
L4

L5

L6

Microsoft

$173K
$174K
$193K
$274K
Uber
NA
NA
$312K
NA
Twitter
NA
NA
NA
$298K
LinkedIn
NA
$215K
NA
NA
Average
$154K
$212.6K
$282.6K
$308.75K

You can learn more about more related topics on our companies page.

FAQs on Embedded Software Interview Course

 
 
 
 
 
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